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How to charge for P&R

By Matt L, on May 29th, 2014

The parking discussion document released yesterday one of the suggested outcomes related to the pricing of park and ride. The document notes:

Park and ride sites in Auckland are free to users which do not reflect the true costs and benefits of using park and ride, and can provide a disincentive to walk, cycle or users of the feeder bus services. Most park and ride facilities are at capacity early in the morning and consequently some customers cannot find parking. Pricing park and ride will allow the demand for parking to be managed, ensuring that customers can always find a park if they are willing to pay.

The RPTP includes an action to introduce charges for park and ride facilities where appropriate, to manage demand and ensure that facilities complement the wider public transport system. park and ride charges must be integrated with public transport fares, using the AT HOP card where practical.

Notwithstanding the above, park and ride provision is an important driver for public transport patronage and the demand for park and ride facilities generally exceeds the capacity provided. Introducing pricing for park and ride too early could have a negative impact on public transport patronage. Pricing park and ride would depend on the price and the availability of alternative car parking spaces, and linked to the roll-out of integrated fares.

The last paragraph along with the “What do you think of this approach” box seems like they’re basically AT’s get out of jail card on actually having to implement pricing however it is interesting to think about just how they might do it. Lots of other cities do charge for P&R already so that gives us some examples to look at.

On an admittedly brief look around the net it seems there are generally three primary pricing schemes for P&R although some cities combine multiple ones..

Free – like we have now

A set daily charge

A monthly reserved carpark

One thing in common with free systems is they seem to have the same problem we do in that they are often completely full quite early and people are constantly complaining about it and calling for more. When it comes to the charged options both have pro’s and con’s and it can be hard to work out which one is best however thankfully one city has not only tried them all (including free) and has reports showing the outcome. It’s Calgary which is a city I’ve talked about before as being an extremely useful comparison for us to use for a whole bunch of reasons.

Looking at many of the city’s attributes Calgary shouldn’t be a big PT city yet it does quite well with about double the number of trips per capita that Auckland has and the key reason behind that has been the development of its increasingly extensive Rapid Transit Network over the last few decades. Park and ride featured strongly in the development of many of Calgary’s initial RTN lines to the South, North East and North West with facilities developed at many stations. These varied in size from less than 100 spaces to the largest over 1700 – that’s about 60% larger than what exists at Albany. The P&R spaces also weren’t just on the RTN network but on a few bus routes too.

Two reports provide details on the charging schemes that Calgary has tried. Costs mentioned are all Canadian dollars and not adjusted for inflation.

The first report is from early 2011 and provides some of the key background information. Calgary had been developing Park and Ride facilities since the 1980’s and had over 14,500 spaced around the city. That’s about 3 times what Auckland Transport say they have however the spaces only accounted for less than 10% of the systems patronage. In addition the facilities took up over 150 acres of valuable land. Despite the huge number of carparks they were constantly full and it was almost impossible to get a carpark after 7:30am. The public were constantly demanding more spaces be built, each of which would cost at least $11,000 to construct and $100-$200 per year to maintain (more if a multi-storey building). Many people who wanted to use the P&R and the PT system simply gave up and drove all the way to the city. That’s probably a situation we have happening in Auckland already.

In 2002 Calgary introduced a system whereby people could reserve one of a few hundred spaces at one of the larger P&R spots for a fee of $50, it was immensely popular even after the fee was doubled to $90 a month. In 2009 the city changed all P&R facilities to a $3 daily charge across the P&R network. The fee was not just about managing demand but the city also promised to increase security, cleaning and maintenance of both the P&R facilities and the stations they served. The impact of the changes on P&R usage, revenues and costs are below and shows that from a financial perspective the first year was worse than before the change however it seems that things quickly started to turn around in 2010 as more people accepted the charges.

Year

Parking usage

Operating Costs

Revenue

2008

Full

$1,000,000

$0

2009

55%

$4,400,000

$3,140,000

2010

65%

$4,500,000

$4,960,000

In terms of outcomes, they found that patronage dropped by 1% in 2009 however it was also at the same time as massive economic upheaval caused by the GFC. In 2010 patronage recovered as did the economy and so it appears the decrease has little or nothing to do with the implementation of charging for P&R. That in itself is important as one of the common arguments against charging is that it will put people of using PT.

Public reaction to the charging scheme was mixed with many locals expressing the view that free parking was essentially a right they had. This sounds like the same type of feedback that happens the world over when parking is changed. More interesting are the changes in behaviour that were identified in a survey in early 2011, in particular these ones seem key:

Most customers who stopped using P&R continued to access the station by bus, walking, cycling or being dropped off.

There was an increase in parking in local streets near stations however some people previously using those locations switched to paying for a closer space.

The majority said it made their convenience and ability to use PT hadn’t changed and in some cases had improved.

Despite this in 2011 the council decided to scrap the daily fee and it was replaced with a monthly reserved space system, the impact of which are contained in this report which shows the results of a self-selecting survey. The monthly reserved system works by setting aside up to 50% of spaces at stations that people can reserve for a fee of $70 per month on a first in first served basis. As the carparks can be quite large, the benefit to reserving means you can get one of the spots closer to the platform, an example of which is shown below (the platform goes north/south to the east of the highlighted areas). If a reserved space is not used by 10am it becomes free to use by anybody as with the rest of the parking.

There lots of interesting outcomes from the survey however perhaps the most important one was that 67% of the people trying to get a free park arrived before 7am while only 31% of those reserving a space did. 51% of those reserving spaces arrived between 7am and 8am. This shows that allowing people to reserve a space let them be more flexible in what time they got to work, leaving home when they wanted to rather than when they had to if they wanted a space. The users reserving a space found they were less stressed and had higher satisfaction ratings to the P&R service.

In contrast those trying for the free spaces were unhappier and often resented the fact they could see spaces that had been reserved but that someone hadn’t turned up to use yet. They felt they should be able to park in the reserved spaces. Many also were paying the $3 daily fee but felt they didn’t use PT enough to benefit from reserving a space permanently.

There are a number of other findings from this survey however my reading of it seems to suggest that that from a customer satisfaction point of view the daily charge was best option for most people.

All up despite the changes to introduce pricing for the carparks patronage has continued to increase and even appears to have accelerated in recent years. One of the most interesting outcomes to charging was that people who previously used P&R to access the PT network continued to use PT but accessed it differently while the presence of a charge actually helped to attract new users who previously couldn’t find a space.

From this it appears that the best option for charging is simply to introduce a daily fee on carparks perhaps with a hybrid system of letting people reserve a space close to the platform too. The discussion document talks about how pricing should be able to be made with HOP which is what AT should be doing and would make things super easy. It will be a while before we see charging for P&R however as AT say other prerequisites are that there are frequent feeder services to stations and that we have integrated fares. Both of those things are while away from implementation yet.

Interesting. My first reaction was definitely along the lines of “don’t put further barriers in people’s way when it comes to using PT”

I still hold to that view in principle and until AT create reliable and useful PT in Auckland, I would say charging for P&R would be premature.

I used to drive to the new Lynn train station and then catch the train to britomart. If I had been required to catch a bus to new Lynn that would have added another 20-30 mins to the trip. New Lynn was the closest train station to our house in Green bay.

I would also be interested in knowing how AThop prices compare to other cities – because it currently feels about the same cost as driving and thus adding another $15 a week on may make it cheaper to drive!

Unless the feeder bus services get magnitudes better (frequency and ontime/reliability wise) seems like we’re punishing people for the failings of a crappy bus system.

For me the 5-10 minute bus ride to the station regularly turns into 30-40 minutes standing at a bus stop because of early/late/noshow running. Which by the time I wait for a train nearly doubles a commute into the city compared with P&R. And coming home, again the piss-poor feeder frequencies and “peak” ending at 6pm network-wide (so if you leave Britomart at 5:30, tough) means I regularly stand around at an interchange waiting in the dark for a 30-40 minute frequency bus that isn’t scheduled to meet trains, and is regularly early/late/noshow.

Train – love it. But I hate with a passion the feeder buses for that 5-10 minute ride that gets me to & from the station because they are just SO unreliable. Unfortunately walking home is only really feasible in summer.

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I would also be interested in knowing how AThop prices compare to other cities – because it currently feels about the same cost as driving and thus adding another $15 a week on may make it cheaper to drive!

I think it’s the wrong move by AT to wait until better feeder services (I assume they’ll also improve cycling to the stations), currently the P&Rs are full, if this is happening already by 7am then these are the sort of people who could simply then carry on into the city and park in an early bird space there. As it is the people travelling at 8-9 are the ones driving in as they can’t park in the P&R and stupidly are still eligible for early bird pricing in the city. Early bird pricing in downtown carparks need to change and P&Rs need to be charged for starting now. Why not sell it as a way that revenue could be raised to support the implementation of bike lanes on roads around the stations.

A new multistorey park building has recently opened at the end of the O-Bahn busway in Adelaide. MetroCard ( The Adelaide quivalent of HOP) users of the car park are charged $2 per day with non-metrocard or casual parking users charged $10.

Isn’t this the kind of thing that is best managed by a private company which can strive after the best use of the land? A company that owned that land would evaluate the cost and charge accordingly. This would seem even more logical when there is no clear increase in patronage for AT.

Additionally, if companies are charging, the logic would be more acceptable to the public than if AT does it. AT can then focus on improving access to the station for all users (mainly kiss-and-ride, bikes, pedestrians and feeder services).

//Interesting. My first reaction was definitely along the lines of “don’t put further barriers in people’s way when it comes to using PT”. I still hold to that view in principle and until AT create reliable and useful PT in Auckland, I would say charging for P&R would be premature. I used to drive to the new Lynn train station and then catch the train to britomart. If I had been required to catch a bus to new Lynn that would have added another 20-30 mins to the trip. //

Agreed. P&R allows in most cases a significant time saving on getting a bus to a station, so in theory should be charged for; but at this stage, charging for P&R would work against nearly everything people are working for.

The problem with this for some of us, at least, is the statement that free P-and-R “…can provide a disincentive to walk, cycle or users of the feeder bus services.” The train I will have to take is the 5:34AM from Pukekohe (once the current motorway ‘bus timetable is finally dropped, as I expect it to be next year). There are no feeder ‘bus services. It is a half-hour walk from my house. Cycling might be a theoretical possibility for me, I suppose – at 71 years of age it is not attractive.

Alternately I make my wife get up at 5:15 to drive me there.

Or I have to pay for P-and-R in addition to the train.

I wonder if there might not be quite a few others in like situation.

It does seem to me that in order to get more people using Public Transport, lowering the cost (it already costs $9.71 one way from Pukekohe to the City; I can come home for free with the Super Gold Card).

The feeder to Papakura is fine for the later trains. The earliest ‘bus from Pukekohe leaves at 6AM. OK if your boss doesn’t mind your turning up 45 minutes late for work every day. But my point is that I think a lot of people will be in similar situations.

And regular commenter mwfic’s example from the previous post explains it better than most; it’s about making the resource available to those who need it by pricing it:

‘Really annoying to get into town to a meeting at 11am to find the carpark full because they subsidised too many people at $13 per day who all drove during the peak. And its not as if I can park at Constellation Dr and get the bus because that is full of free-loaders. So I end up driving around the CBD looking for a space when I would happily pay $15 for an hour and a half. Just price all spaces by the half hour and lift the price until they are almost full. Do that in the CBD and at the park and ride.’

Principally it is the idea that rationing by price is better than rationing by scarcity. The later is the communist era system; bread was always cheap but usually unavailable, here parking is free [and that’s cheap] but full by 7am at key locations, so unavailable for most.

Combine significantly improved feeder services with integrated fares which in most cases will mean the feeder ride is at no additional cost, with a parking charge and this should lead to a win/win for all transit users including PnR users.

Constellation Dr was built for barrier arms with the queuing areas already defined with traffic islands. Someone just decided to make it free as they were worried the Busway patronage numbers would be an embarrassment. Now it means they will have to start changing for something people already get free. Good luck with that! If you want to use parking as a second best policy for congestion charging then you just end up adding another layer of market distortions. Far better to charge a single hourly rate at all times and let people make the best choices they can. I know a number of people who would park there for short duration trips to the CBD if they knew parking was available. Problem is we know it probably isnt so we either drive in to town or dont go to the CBD. Both of those are a loss of utility to the individual and the community. Instead the parking is a windfall gain to people who get up early regardless of the value of their trip.

One thing about Calgary’s park-and-rides – walking through a giant wasteland of parking (not especially well equipped with footpaths at the stations I used) made walking to the station pretty unpleasant, so in this case catering so lavishly to P&R made the service less attractive and less usable for non-drivers. I never even considered riding my bike to the station – no decent parking.

The feeder buses are OK if you live on a direct route, especially because tickets are transferable, but the Calgary bus route map looks like spaghetti thrown at a wall, so whether they’re a usable option is very dependent on what route you live on. It would be interesting to see the effects on P&R if their bus network got a redesign.

FWIW, the Pukekohe Park and Ride is a wasteland. It’s behind a lot of buildings, poorly lit, and invisible from the street. Two cases I know of personally of people who have had their cars stolen from it.

I absolutely agree that the HOP card should be the way to enter, either free parking or paid.

One of the biggest shibboleths of transit planning is the idea that you can never have too much free park and ride.

These facilities cost money that could have other uses to improve the public transport service.

If I have to pay to use a connecting bus, it’s entirely reasonable that the other fellow pays to use a car park space that also costs money to build and maintain.

The right price would vary with location. In an outer suburban greenfields site beside the train line, with low opportunity cost (that particular station is not a candidate for higher density walkup development), the right price might be quite low. At an established centre, the opposite.

Just like with the bus fare, I don’t necessarily mean it needs to be full cost recovery, but at least there should to be some economic discipline to guide investment choices. If a modest fee means that you car park stands empty, that’s a good sign that you probably built it in the wrong place, and that can inform future planning for others.

Park n Ride is supposed to be free parking, that’s the whole point, to get people onto PT. Start charging, and people will just drive the whole way.

Parking charges are only necessary in city environments. Street parking and carparks in outer suburbs are usually free, whether they are for PT or something else. In fact outside Auckland, in many towns and cities parking everywhere is free.

The idea that all parking must be charged for is just yet another anti-car “put the boot in”, and in this case will damage PT use. Not well thought out at all.

I rather agree – but I do think that limiting it to PT users would be a great help. I think a lot of people use at least the Papakura and Pukekohe PandR just for free parking all day. In the case of Pukekohe, the lot is nowhere near full, but I think Papakura is often chuckablock. If the idea is to encourage regular users to use PT, then those same users ought, in any case, to be using HOP cards (I have to say that there is a regular on my morning ‘bus who is on there every morning and fumbles through her wallet every morning and never gives the right fare so has to be given change. For a commute ‘bus, those 30- to sometimes 60-second delays are a real nuisance.

So if they said that PandR is HOP-card entry – even if it’s free (or very minimal in cost) (and – wow!! – require HOP card for the Express ‘buses 🙂 – probably impracticable) – if they did that, then the PandR would at least only be used by PT users.

I resent the fact that my rates and taxes are being used to subsidise people who have already made a choice to use the most expensive form of transport. That on top of the road maintenance and other subsidies already provdied by my taxes and rates.

Charging for parking anywhere is one way to recover a small part of that subsidy. Just like the fare box recovery rate for PT, there should be a road building and maintenance recovery rate from parking. Only fair.

Free footpaths = a subsidy to walking. Should we toll footpaths? After all, footpaths use much more land than a few car parks. How about public open space? Charge for that too?

PT is subsidised to the hilt, and the free parking at stations is a part of that PT system, it is NOT a subsidy to driving, as it does not reduce your driving cost.

The irony is you that for some reason you can’t seem to see that charging for parking will just encourage driving to your destination, most places of which will have free parking somewhere nearby. Do you want people to use PT or not?

“The irony is you that for some reason you can’t seem to see that charging for parking will just encourage driving to your destination, most places of which will have free parking somewhere nearby. Do you want people to use PT or not?”
Except the opposite happened in Calgary which was part of the point of this post or do you just conveniently ignore that.

Calgary is irrelevant to the Auckland situation where people drive from non-PT served streets and rural areas, to a park n ride. Charge for the parking, and you’ll achieve one thing – encourage those people to just skip the park n ride and drive all the way. The whole reason they use park n ride is because they either don’t live in a PT-served street, or they need their car before or after their commute for other reasons.

There’s no reason for anyone to be upset at the presence of car parks out in the suburbs or city fringe, unless you are just ideologically opposed to cars for the sake of it. If someone proposed using the same amount of land for green space or a playground I guarantee nobody here would be calling for it to be charged for.

They don’t however, surveys of the constellation and Albany Park n rides show that over 90% of them are coming a few km from nearby suburbs. Rural users are the clear minority, precisely because the parking is subsidised and so easily accessed by local suburbanites they don’t get a look in. No idea how parking at Avondale or Smales farm is supposed to help rural dwellers.

As for your latter claim, we would probably suggest that green space or a playground is also a bad use of land next to rapid transit stations too. Patrick has been campaigning against removing retail on Ppnsonby Rd to build an unnecessary park lately.

No, because, in economic terms* –
1. the footpath is a public good: that is, it is non-rival in use – one’s person’s use does not prevent others from using it.** The economically optimal charge for a non-rival public good is zero.
2. the foothpath, by and large, has no opportunity cost – that is, the land would have little or no value in other uses (since the vast majority of footpaths are narrow strips of land for which other uses would be impractical).

A parking lot next to a train station contrasts on both counts. While I use a parking space, no-one else can. And the land may well have other profitable uses.

Accordingly, the fact that it’s silly to consider tolling footpaths has no particular bearing on the question of whether it would be sensible to toll park and rides. They are different situations.

* that is, disregarding the fact that it’s impractical
** ‘public good’, for economists, means something that is non-excludable and/or non-rival. Traditional examples: street lighting. Lighthouses. The protection provided by the nation’s defence force. There are no moral connotations. ‘Public good’ does *not* mean, as you sometimes hear, ‘a worthy activity which should be encouraged’.

So right. Footpaths aren’t there for pedestrians – they’re there to keep pedestrians out of the way of cars, so that cars can safely go faster than walking pace. They’re an expense that needs to be chalked up to motor vehicles, rather than seen as a “cost” of providing for pedestrians. The same’s true of “cycling infrastructure”, which is only necessary because there’s cars around.

We also pave footpaths, and build pram ramps and the like – but these are for the amenity and accessibility benefits, things which we generally fund from local rates and taxes.

Geoff perhaps you should read the post. Calgary introduced parking pricing and patronage went up as those that didn’t want to pay got to stations a different way while those who some who weren’t using PT started to due to being able to get a space

Even from a pro-car point of view it makes sense to charge for Park and Ride so you can build even more spaces over the top of the existing ones. That way at least when drivers arrive at the bus station they know they will get a space.

I agree with PR car parks should be maintained and there is a cost attached to it. But public transport users should not be penalised for using public transport. Walking 30 minutes (that’s an hour return) to a bus stop is just not viable, and even 10 minutes is not ideal on a cold raining winter evenings.

Maintenance costs for these car park should be subsidised by those parking in the city. $15 day parking in the city is quite attractive compared to walking a long way to a bus stop, queuing for a bus and have no sitting.

Charge a daily rate for the park and ride so that it is approx 95% full
PT use will increase because: a) the car park is still full, b) pricing will incentive feeder bus use, walking and cycling, c) pricing will encourage carpooling to park and ride
Ring-fence the money from pricing to further improve PT connections and provide a safe and high quality park and ride
No brainer!

Isn’t park n ride largely a damning indictment of the crappy feeder services? Fix that, and the only people who will need to park there are those who live out in the sticks, past the feeder bus routes.

I absolutely agree. I live in the sticks (Pukekohe) and there is *no* feeder service to the train station – and if there were, it would not start until well after the early train I need to catch (5:34AM). I would *not* drive to the train station if there were a feeder I could walk to in, say, five minutes.

Compared with many international fares; the marginal costs of driving a car; and early bird parking in the city $13; the cost of bussing from Albany is expensive at over $10 return.
Part of the answer is to stop AT distorting the market by keeping early bird rates low. I would argue that they also have the lowest hourly rates, again discouraging public transport use.
I suggest that another part of the answer is to lower Albany Hop trips to $4 each way and to charge $2 to use the car park. The status quo for price is maintained for those using the PnR and there is a distinct incentive for those choosing to use feeders, bike or walking. We will also see how a price change drives demand.
Unfortunately one of the sad aspects of NZ society is that the number of obese adults has almost reached 30%. As a society we are fast coming to the stage where we won’t be able to sustain people choosing to drive, park and ride everywhere.

I don’t view the trip from Albany to Britomart ($10.08 return using HOP card) as expensive compared to driving. Unless of course it is used for a family trip. Then it gets to $25 return for a family. The time for off-peak / weekend capped fares is now.

Park ‘n ride is so hit and miss at Orakei most locals don’t bother on weekdays. We need the feeder bus services the Local Board is keen on.

Mon-Fri all day parking should go so everyone gets a go. The whole park should be a mix of free P120/P180/P240/motorcycle spots and disabled spaces. Just charging people to park all day won’t do a thing to increase PT use apart from possibly the demographics of the users.

What are we trying to achieve? Are we trying to implement a congestion free network? How does the P&R fit into this goal? Will charging at the P&R help achieve the end result we’re aiming for?
Once the P&R is full at the times if peak congestion it is no longer available to reduce the congestion then we need to think about how to maximize it’s use. I believe that charging for the feeders as part of the travel charged to the HOP from door to door with the frequent feeder.
Charges need to be set to achieve those ends. When the Minister is able to price the costs to the economy of the congestion then I feel that the initial subsidy of the fares to achieve the congestion free network must be readily calculable as well.
That would see parking removed from many streets to facilitate steady bus movement and parking charges increased to reduce the attraction of driving and parking in such a way as to relieve the congestion. The congestion charging as outlined by Jonas Eliasson points out are all nudges (it is unfortunate that the Govt has ruled out AC implementing congestion charges).